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(8)Zidane Tribal vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna 2018
Ulti's Analysis All of us have a few feels-good-man calls in contests where we go against the board in the face of all logic and all of the LOL x stats. I got some matches hilariously wrong this contest, but I had some feels-good matches as well. This was one of them. Never a doubt for me. I know the stats and the gurus and all that stuff favored Zidane, not to mention this match happening eight years ago: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3739-chaos-division-round-1-cecil-harvey-vs-knuckles Knuckles only got 52% against Cecil at the time and it was considered a massive embarrassment. Which it was. Cecil is so laughably bad in these contests that Cecil Harvey Never Wins has taken off as the new lulz. Did you guys know Cecil is now 0-6 in these things and that Gordon only started out 0-4? It's true. And that guy got 48% on Knuckles, so the logic for picking Zidane here made sense. But here's the thing. That was eight years ago, and Knuckles has a way of winning these debated matches he always appears in. He was supposed to lose to Yuna in 2003. He beat her. Some people thought Kefka could beat him in 2004. Knuckles won. Everyone already knows about Knuckles beating Magus in 2005. Knuckles was in the opening match in 2007, and people had no idea what would end up happening. He ended up barely getting second place. He only failed to get out of round one in 2008 because Mario can't SFF Zelda. We've already discussed 2010. Going into this match, Knuckles had appeared in eight contests. He was 7-1 in round 1 coming into this year. He's 0-7 in round 2, but hey! There's also the common sense stuff that one doesn't need the LOL x stats for. Since 2010, a few things happened in Knuckles' favor. One, the Sonic series has all but bent the knee to Nintendo. Sonic was already in Smash Bros Brawl at the time, and since then you might as well call Sonic a Nintendo character. Two, remember how well Mega Man 9 was received by gamers? Sonic had his version, called Sonic Mania. It was very well received, and took the series back to its roots. No doubt this would help Knuckles. Pair that with Square being a thorough abomination, and Zidane and Knuckles are clearly headed in opposite directions. On top of all that, this match was slated to happen on the day of Wario/Monika, and although Monika never came close to winning that match, she was absolutely going to get rallied. I had zero doubts that the kinds of voters who would come over here due to that rally would vote for Knuckles. So when this match started and Knuckles beat the piss out of Zidane en route to an Ulti-style destruction in which he was never once challenged, I was in no way surprised. I thought the match would be closer than it was, but I was not at all surprised that Knuckles won. If he isn't facing elites or near elites in round one, it's a safe bet he's winning. His one loss was because he was in a fourway with Mario and Zelda in the poll. In every other contest, he wins round 1 and jobs in round 2. Every single time. This year was no different. Total side note: it's hilarious to me that Tails made it to round 3 before Knuckles could, despite Knuckles having FAR more high profile wins and being a much cooler character. People must really, really hold that damn elevator in Sonic 3 against this guy. Last point. The casuals wrecked the board on this match, meaning my casual perspective on this match was right. People don't care about Square anymore. Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: Another debated match turned fairly one-sided. This was very similar to Tidus vs. DK in a lot of ways. It briefly seemed close then reality set in and it was stable throughout. Historically this match would have either been close or even reversed in favour of Zidane. And sure enough, the casuals beat us again in the prediction arena easily, showing that the "mainstream" picks have some weight behind them. What could this mean?: That Final Fantasy is DEAD. But more on that in the next match. It was a good show for Knuckles, and there is a fair argument for a Sonic Mania boost. We will have a clearer picture of how much is a Sonic boost and how much is FF decline when Knuckles goes up against Zero. I also have to wonder if Knuckles benefits from the apparent Nintendo boost too, his franchise has been linked to Nintendo for a while. After all, Sonic Mania is as they say perfect for Switch. Expect more Nintendo associated characters showing up Final Fantasy in the future. Safer777's Analysis Man another hilarious match. Seriously Knuckles won? Damn! It was a debatable match true but seriously. Zidane sucks! Vivi who is from the same game is much stronger. Also strangely enough almost all victories of Knuckles are against FF characters! What? And it is not that he is strong or anything. Still he is from the Sonic series and that makes him recognizable aI guess. Or most FF characters suck now. Guess a combination of both!So congrats to him I guess. A fun fact is that he has advanced all but 1 times in the 2nd round but he has never gone in Round 3! Guess we should have watched this when we made our picks! The gurus had Zidane with 61.5% too. So once again the Casuals embarrased us. Hey it happens. Two times in two days too! But it does happen! And yeah the prediction percentage was good for this kind of match too. Tsunami's Analysis Today's vote total is quite a bit higher than the previous day's, which suggests that Monika really was rallied; it just didn't make a difference. Ironically given that she was up against a Nintendo character, it was Square that got screwed over by this. Zidane wasn't winning this regardless, but it was thought to be a debatable match and it wasn't even close. Knuckles got a better percentage against Zidane than he did in 2010 against Cecil Harvey Never Wins. Did Team Sonic boost, or is this just the seeming blanket deboost for any Square character whose game wasn't released between 1994 and 1997? Because seriously, FFVI/CT/FFVII were the only things that didn't look awful. Alternatively, Zidane has never been as strong as we thought he was. His first appearance isn't relevant because he faced a Noble Niner in Round 1, but in 2007 he finished fourth, comfortably behind Ness, in the Alucard-Liquid Snake 3 vote match. In 2008 he broke a lot of brackets by beating Shadow (wait, is that foreshadowing or something?) and beat out Wario for third place in Round 2, but both of those were riding behind Link. In 2010 he lost to Ike, which it turns out is not really a respectable loss after all. There really isn't anything here to suggest a reason to have faith in Zidane against anything with strength--and no, 2013 Ridley doesn't count; Ridley may be stronger than his record but he's not that strong. Category:2018 Contest Matches